The Lord is Preparing the Way

Following is Justin's e-mail home, of July 20th. I was in China where blogging is blocked, and I couldn't post this until now (passing through Tokyo on the way home!!!). :-) Justin thinks that I've gone over to the dark side because I now use an iPhone; I'm glad he hasn't lost his sense of humor!

Hey family! Sounds like you all had so much fun down in Delta! Imagine being a missionary in a town that size full time... You brought up an interesting point though, about being just 4 miles outside of town and not being able to see any signs of civilization anywhere. That's one thing I've noticed that's different about this area compared with out west. Out there you can drive forever without seeing a thing before coming across a little town in the middle of nowhere, then see nothing again for a couple more hours. Out here there are alot more small towns, they aren't nearly as spaced out. Ava is pretty far from anything else, but it's about as middle of nowhere as you'll get. The interesting thing though, is that even with a place like Ava, when you're 4 or 5 miles outside town, or even further, it's not totally dead. You'll still see houses along the highway all the way up to Springfield. (for the most part. Some areas are pretty dead, but not as many) It's different than out west. I think it's mainly because out there (at least everywhere we've lived) it's all desert, here it isn't. There's beautiful, fertile land everywhere here, so people can go just about anywhere, they don't necessarily have to be near the town. That's why I love it here. I'd love to live out in the country somewhere out here in the Ava area. (definitely not in the town itself though) But yes Dad, just about everyone does know each other and I think most people are pretty nice - to each other. Not as much to us... We don't get treated too bad though. We were talking to a guy the other day, however, who is a re-po guy for a living. We definitely get better reactions from people than he does...

I can't believe you're using an iPhone, Dad! I never thought you would go over to the dark side. The Second Coming must be very soon indeed. I'm not sure which is scarier, though - you switching over to an iPhone, or Mom leaving you in charge there for a week. Hopefully it all turns out alright...

Springfield South District: Goodale, Davis, Butler, Phillps, Lee, Ewert

This has been an awesome week! On Thursday, we had Zone Conference, which is always tons and tons of fun and spiritual. This one was especially good because we finally got to meet President and Sister Merkley! They are amazing. The work here is definitely going to continue moving forward. I miss President and Sister Seal a ton, but the Merkley's will be great as well. Then on Friday and Saturday we got to go on exchanges with the Zone Leaders, which is probably my favorite thing to do. I haven't gotten to do it in a while, but now that I'm training I'll get to a couple of times a transfer because the Zone Leaders always go on exchanges with all of the new missionaries in their zone. It was especially fun serving with Elder Erbe for the day obviously because he's an amazing missionary and I learned a ton, but also because he trained my MTC companion. So that was cool. The work here is continuing to get better and better. It's really amazing to see. You can definitely see the Lord's hand in everything going on here. We've already knocked on every door in Ava, and talked to just about everyone, yet the Lord continues to place prepared people in our path every single day. The members of the ward here are AMAZING as well, they've done a ton to help us. We've just seen miracle after miracle after miracle. Thank you all for your prayers as well, we've definitely felt them. Please keep praying for us, there are so many people out there that need this gospel. I have such a strong testimony that the Lord is "pouring out His spirit...to prepare the minds of the children of men" (Alma 16:16) for the gospel. Every day, every where we go, there are people whom the Lord has prepared, and He will lead us to them. Let's find 'em! I love you all! Have a great week!

OTMs in Ava

It was great hearing from Elder Goodale today. I was sad that last week our letters to him didn't arrive during the week, but hopefully he received those today. One of our Sunday afternoon activities each week is that we all sit down and each member of our family writes him a letter. Then we mail all of those off in one packet. Anyway... we know he'd LOVE to hear from you, too, so please write him: Elder Justin Michael Goodale, Rt. 1 Box 499-C, Ava, MO 65608

Hey everybody! How's your week going? I never did get those letters, so hopefully they come today. I hope you all had fun in Utah, though. This week was awesome! Angela wasn't able to make it to church because her brother was visiting from Indiana, but she's been reading and she's starting to really get it. We may be able to set a baptismal date with her this week. We also had 7 new investigators this week, including Mikayla (that's probably spelled wrong), who's from a part-member family, and Stacy, a woman in Seymour that is REALLY solid. So prepared. This week things have definitely started moving here, and we're getting to teach alot more. The only bad part is that we've now knocked on basically all the doors here in little Ava , so it will be a little tougher to find people through our own efforts. We may not need to, though. The best thing of all this week is that with all of the work we've been doing is that the members have been really recognizing it and we've really gained alot of member trust. After we got 206 OTM's last week, we basically challenged the ward to beat us. Elder Conrad and I tried that in Miami and it didn't work that well, but here in Ava the ward is totally different. The whole ward is super pumped up about it! I was talking to Brother Wilber, the Elder's Quorum President (WAY sweet guy), and he said that all of ward council was basically focused on our "OTM challenge." The ward is excited and ready to take us on. It's awesome. There are a couple of other members that came up to us this Sunday and told us that they had friends that they've been working with that are wanting to meet with us, and they had already set up the appointments to have us in their home to teach their friends and everything! This ward is incredible! In two weeks here we've gotten more member referrals than I had in my first two areas combined. So basically I'm super excited for this coming week. It's amazing that even in a tiny town like this, where the whole town gets tracted out by missionaries pretty much every single month, there are still people who the Lord is preparing who are ready for our message. I love this work! Have a great week everyone!

One Stoplight Town

Pretty amazing... Elder Goodale is serving in a town that has just one stoplight. And he says of all the areas he's served in, he could actually move to this one-stoplight-town. :-) Last week we received another SD card from Elder Goodale's digital camera, and to the right here is one of the photos from that, from Miami, OK (his last area). To see all the photos, go to the Facebook photo album linked here. Enjoy his e-mail from today:

Hey family! This was an awesome week! We had 6 new investigators, and 2 of them came to church! So that was really good, we're starting to get this area going again. We had 206 OTM's this week, so that's not bad at all! The Zone Leaders challenged every area in the zone to get 200 OTM's in a week (I've only seen that happen once before. I know it does happen occasionally, but it's tough) and it was a little competition to see which area could get 200 in a week first. Well, about half way through the week it became apparent that it would be either us or the Zone Leaders who got it, and then the race was on. (for them anyway. We obviously don't see their indicators so we had no idea they were trying to beat us) Well, we won by two. They had 204, we had 206. I think it was pretty fair too because granted they were teaching more lessons than us, but also they are in Branson. It's a little easier to get OTM's there, especially during the summer, then here in little Ava... The problem is that now we've talked to every person in Ava, so that number will drop off significantly... Things are going great though. It's definitely been a challenge, and I'm learning a ton, but it's amazing how the atonement can apply to EVERY aspect of our lives. We're still struggling to get the teaching pool up to where it should be, and we're a long way away, but we've recieved so much strength beyond our own this week, and we've seen some incredible miracles. We've really been blessed as we've relied on the Lord. We've got this investigator named Angela who came to church, she's 19 and has a 2 year old daughter. She's kind of quiet, but she's awesome. She's really starting to progress, so please pray for her that she will still have that desire and that she will begin to really understand the significance of the restoration. Also pray that we'll be able to figure out who would be best to fellowship her, since we don't really know the members here too well yet... The other investigator at church was Sarah. We've only taught her once, but she's cool. She was a member referral. I always love those!

Since you wanted more detail about the area, mom - We do have a Wal-mart Supercenter here in Ava, but that's really the only chain store. Well actually we have a Dollar General as well. But other than that the answer is yes it's mostly little mom-and-pop stores. We have one light here in Ava, at the entrance to town right where the Wal-mart and the McDonalds are. Of course. At the opposite end of town we do have a stop sign with one of those blinking red lights hanging above it though, if you want to consider that a light... I just found out the other day that Ava is the only incorporated town in all of Douglas County. We also cover all of Ozark County. We never really go down there unless a member there is feeding us though, as the biggest town in the whole county is Gainesville, a booming metropolis of 600 people! We also cover significant portions of a couple of other counties. I was talking to a member that's a school teacher on Friday, and found out that our ward boundaries cover something like 9 school districts!!! North to south the boundary goes from Seymour, MO, all the way down to the Arkansas state line. If you look on a map you'll see that that is a pretty significant area... It's something similar east to west, but I'm not even exactly sure what the boundaries are that way. There's nobody that lives there anyway. But I LOVE this area! Missionary work in an area with this few people is tough (especially on a holiday weekend. NOBODY is home!!!) but the area itself is absolutely beautiful. I love how green it is here, and how spread out it is. I like these small towns. You pretty much need a truck here, but you know I don't have a problem with that. :) I feel much more in my element now anyway now that I'm driving a truck. The ward here is also incredible. If I was to move to any of the areas I've served in so far, it would be Ava hands down. I really love Clarksville and Miami (well I kind of love Miami. I LOVED being a missionary there, but I wouldn't necessarily want to live there...), but Ava is the best. The thing that amazes me is that missionaries have been here forever and everyone has talked to missionaries at least 500 times and they aren't interested at all, yet we still manage to find people to teach. We ask everyone we talk to for referrals, and the main thing we ask for is if they know anyone who just moved in to the area. We've been trying to find all the new people here, and it seems to be working pretty well. Well that's about it for this week! Everything here is going great! We still have a long way to go though, so keep praying for us! I love you all!

Additionally, in my letter to him last week, I asked him how they handle transfers in his mission. Following is his reply to that specific question:

To answer your question, for transfers there are two transfer loops that leave from Tulsa at the same time, the "north loop" and the "south loop." One of them takes the 3 pick-up trucks that are in the Tulsa area, and the other loop takes "the bull" and a couple other cars. The bull is a big 15 passenger van that they also pull a big trailer behind. The north loop goes up from Tulsa and the first stop, or "transfer point," is Joplin, MO. They then go on to Mt. Vernon, MO; Rogers, AR; Ft. Smith, AR; then Muskogee, OK. Those are the 5 transfer points. The south loop basically goes the other direction, from Tulsa to Muskogee to Ft. Smith, and so forth. We get told what loop we're on, and what time the cars will reach whichever transfer point is closest to us. Members give us a ride there. For instance this last time I was on the north loop, and we had to be in Joplin at 9 am, so Brother Gibson drove us out there. Then I got on the bull and road with a bunch of other missionaries (I think there were like 16 or 17 of us in that van...) to Mt. Vernon. I got off at Mt. Vernon and met Brother Anderson, who drove us home to Ava. So that's how the system works here. It works pretty well.